3/5 ★ – stephenhill777's review of Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney.

Say whatever else you want about the Ace Attorney series, they are unique. A visual novel with such a distinctive format that it has become a new genre unto itself, the Object-‘em-up! It’s such an interesting niche that it deserves celebration, and this installment does indeed carry a lot of the strengths of the previous titles. However, it also carries some of their weaknesses, while introducing a few of its own. Acting as something of a soft reboot, the previous games’ Phoenix Wright is no longer an attorney, but an unshaven, hoodie-wearing piano player who has been accused of murder. Defending him is Apollo Justice, our fresh-faced and extremely pointy-haired new protagonist. Apollo is practically identical to the Phoenix of previous games, put-upon and prone to courtroom jitters. This works really well for the gameplay, but with similarities as glaring as these, it feels like a missed opportunity to introduce an entirely new kind of character. In an attempt to distract from the copy/paste job, Phoenix Wright’s personality has instead been given a drastic overhaul. He is now seen as a wise but somewhat spacey mentor, who is more on top of things than he would have people believe. It’s not the most believable transition, especially as you can hear his inner monologue in a later chapter, which reverts to his personality from previous titles. From this standpoint, he is clearly the same passionate but self-pitying workaholic from before, but this isn’t conveyed from Apollo’s perspective at all. The strength of these games has always been its characters and while this game absolutely suffers from diminishing returns, they are at least as eclectic and idiosyncratic as ever. The judge remains a clueless bimbo, providing an air of brevity to the court sessions with his demented tangents and simpering upon attractive witnesses. And while your magician-in-training sidekick Trucy is very obviously a stand-in for Maya from the previous games, she is still relentlessly entertaining as a foil to Apollo’s more serious disposition. The less exciting investigation sections are mitigated by her light-hearted interruptions, insisting Apollo touches the flashing red button, or begging him to buy her treats. This relationship is the foundation on which most of the game rests, as you spend the majority of your time talking to her. And despite the game having an icky preoccupation with her panties, the relationship is still a solid one. However, Trucy aside, it definitely feels as though Capcom are beginning to run out of ideas in terms of characters. All the replacements suffer from largely negative comparisons. The perpetually unlucky Detective Gumshoe, always a fan-favorite, has sadly been replaced with a sullen snack-eating, science buff named Ema. She lacks the impact Gumshoe always provided in hilarious fashion and, for the most part, simply acts as a mouth piece for explaining the game’s gimmicky new mechanics. Similarly, prosecutor Miles Edgeworth has been replaced with Klavier Gavin, a German-accented model who moonlights as a rock star. Opinions might be divided on this, but I found his self-aggrandizing and regular air-guitar solos to be particularly grating. There are some standouts witnesses that go some way towards alleviating the roster. Personal favorites include the noodle stall chef who appears to have noodles for hair, and a Yakuza matriarch with a soft spot for kids and a katana hidden in her broom. It’s a shame those two witnesses never take the stand because the court sessions are still the highlights of the game. Figuring out the weak points of an argument remains incredibly satisfying as you scour testimonies for contradictions or outright lies. When you finally see a witness crumble before your logic, it provides a rare sense of gratification that has nothing to do with reflexes or skill. A murder case that seemed completely black and white from the beginning is revealed to be impossibly complex, and then explained and repackaged, all tied up in a neat little ribbon. The soundtrack and sound design contributes enormously to this, instilling proceedings with a strong sense of melodrama. They know exactly when to cut the music to increase tension, and when to blast it at full volume to relieve it. That objection theme still slaps. Sadly, there are a few issues inherent in this system too. The biggest problem all of these games have is a clunky interface. Every game in the series has had at least one testimony where I can clearly see the solution, but I don’t know which piece of evidence the game wants me to present to explain my logic. This is a constant bugbear, and why I almost always feel the need to check a walkthrough to proceed. The murder cases also drag on for far too long, when a brisker affair would hold interest a lot better. This is a roughly 15 hour game, but split across four murder cases. Adding just one more and reducing the time spent on each case would have made for a far more satisfying affair. Finally, this game introduces a “perception” mechanic, in which you are tasked with spotting little tics that occur when the witness is lying. While functional, this mechanic slows the pace down to a crawl in order to indulge a fairly sub-par gimmick. It’s nowhere near as interesting as the “hidden secrets” mechanic from previous games and ultimately falls flat. This is the fourth game in the Ace Attorney series and it’s really starting to show its age at this point. It’s worth noting that they do still scratch a very particular itch, and no game does it quite like this series. It maintains the strength of its forbears, but the new changes introduced here are largely for the worse. Knowing very little about the games that follow, I can only hope that they are handled with a delicate hand and not a clenched fist.